Blog 2 - EDU 411

For this blog, I observed ESI screenings being conducted in an Early Childhood setting and spoke with the Child Development Manager and the Mental Health Coordinator in regards to assessment in ELL’s. After observing the screening process my belief in the necessity of conducting screenings in the child’s native language was only enforced.  On this particular day the screenings were done by teachers, over a four hour period, as parents brought their children in to be screened for the next school year. The children were taken by teachers into a separate area to be screened. There were English speaking teachers and Spanish speaking teachers and the materials were available in both English and Spanish. Children have to follow directions to complete tasks, repeat key words, finish sentences, describe objects, copy pictures, match pictures, and do several large motor skills per directions depending on age. These screenings could not be completed for non-English or Spanish speaking children.  Observing the Spanish speaking teachers screen those children who spoke Spanish demonstrated the need for materials in all languages, and/or screeners in those languages. In this setting, the Spanish speaking children flourished and were easily supported.   The process was not unnecessarily stressful for them and the screenings were able to be completed.  I spoke with a teacher that has been teaching for 15 years and she recalled a time when screenings were only available in English and the children were all screened in English. She is pleased with the progress that has been made, one thing leading to another, and now we have bilingual screenings, bilingual classroom, and ESL classrooms. This teacher was one of the first Spanish speaking teachers hired for Head Start in Rockford and now nearly half of the staff is classified as bilingual.

After speaking with the Child Development manager, it is apparent that screening capabilities in other languages are not in the works. Lack of resources, lack of screeners, and I believe a lack of advocacy, contribute to this not being on the priority list.  As a teacher with many ELL’s in my classroom, this is absolutely on my radar and a priority for me. My ELL’s are immersed into an English speaking classroom and the uphill climb begins. I can’t assess them, usually, for at least a year. These children come in with no English language, without being screened, and sometimes without the ability to communicate with others. Right now I have a 4 year old girl that speaks Arabic and she is the only Arabic speaking child in my class. Unless her and I sit down and look at my Beginning Arabic Dictionary, she is unable to have any dialogue over the three and a half hours.  When we work in the book, her face just lights up and yet we are limited to words, individual words, labeling common objects where I can support with English and try to pronounce it in Arabic. Sometimes she laughs a lot at my Arabic.   

The Mental Health Specialist confirmed my concerns and experiences, saying that essentially when screenings the ELL’s without a translator it is a matter of going through the motions to demonstrate on paper that an attempt was made to screen a child. I guess, as long as a paper trail demonstrating attempt is acceptable to the powers that be, change will be slow.  

After conducting this field work and considering my classroom experiences, I think that for the purpose of this paper I will focus on assessment. It is a concrete topic and there is definitely a need for advocacy and education regarding assessing ELL’s.  I believe that I will be able to focus on this topic, find enough research to write a paper demonstrating the need and possible solutions, and then eventually put something into action in the second part of this course.